


be nothing but magic

by spitecheck



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - You've Got Mail Fusion, Angst with a Happy Ending, Love Letters, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-28
Updated: 2019-04-28
Packaged: 2020-02-09 06:33:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18632743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spitecheck/pseuds/spitecheck
Summary: Quentin writes love letters to people he doesn’t know for a little bit of cash. He’s not sure what amount of cash, if such an amount even exists, is enough to make him write a love letter to Eliot Waugh.





	be nothing but magic

 

_And no one can ever figure out what you want, / and you won’t tell them, / and you realise the one person in the world who loves you / isn’t the one you thought it would be, / and you don’t trust him to love you in a way / you would enjoy._

-from _A Primer for the Small Weird Loves_ by Richard Siken

-

It started out as a Valentine’s day stint to earn some extra money as a broke college student—he was taking a creative writing elective to fill up credit anyway, might as well put those skills to use. To Quentin’s pleasant surprise, however, it turned out that there was a sizeable demographic for emotionally stunted people wanting to hide behind anonymity and lavender prose at an Ivy League university, so it turned into somewhat of a business.

It was an easy enough gig; he had an email set up for people to send in their requests, always at the complete assurance of patient-doctor-esque confidentiality, wrote up a letter in a spare hour or two, and handed it off to Penny, who, despite pretending to forget Quentin’s name sometimes, somehow always managed to get the letter delivered to the recipient.

Penny, his roommate, had begrudgingly accepted to play messenger boy when Quentin offered him a percentage of his commission fees, though not without grumbling about ‘literally being back in middle school passing love notes.’

He was the only person besides Julia who knew that he was the one behind the infamous love letters at Columbia. On some level, Penny must’ve understood (empathised was too strong a word) Quentin’s anxieties about everyone knowing he held all of Columbia’s most sensational gossip in his inbox, and even more so his anxieties about social interaction. Still, he still found it somewhat of a miracle that he’d been able to keep his mouth shut all this time. He supposed that him telling Kady about that one (one!) time he caught Quentin singing Taylor Swift in the shower was enough catharsis.

Quentin had received a fair share of strange and weird requests over the months he’d been writing anonymous love letters. It was policy to ask for details to personalise the letter, which he regretted to various extents. Some emails he’d received brought him close to tears with their sincerity, others he’d read and immediately wanted to wash his eyes out.

This one, however, made him want to crawl under his bed and pretend he never received it at all.

The email had been sitting in his inbox for a few days now, past his usual response time. He’d first read the subject line and felt his stomach drop just a little bit, took a breath, and completely ignored it like it would eventually disappear.

But no, that hadn’t happened—in fact, with every passing day, the bold font indicating the unread email seemed to grow larger and bolder like it was guilt-tripping him. He finally mustered the courage to click on it on day number four, though not before checking Penny wasn’t behind him or something.

The email was short; a letter, it requested, for Eliot Waugh. No additional details. They had used a throwaway email address, so he couldn’t even figure out who it was from. Great.

Here was the problem with Eliot Waugh: sure, Quentin had written letters to people he actually knew before, but this was—this was _Eliot_. One just didn’t write a love letter to someone like him. He’d—laugh at it, probably, throw it aside like it was a class-assigned reading he wasn’t gonna do. He probably got love letters on a regular basis.

He couldn’t get too personal. That was obvious. When he’d written letters for other people he actually knew, he was careful to only go off the details that the requester listed in the email. Well, it wasn’t like there were any details that were listed here. And it wasn’t like Quentin knew Eliot Waugh well enough to make it convincingly genuine either.

He’d met Eliot on the day he had his entrance interview—thinking about it, he was the first person he’d met at Columbia at all. Quentin had, naturally, looked so confounded and lost that Eliot must have taken pity on him and asked him if he needed to get somewhere, and led him to the admissions office with such equanimity Quentin half-thought he was in some kind of dream or hallucination. He still remembered the way he looked, cigarette in mouth, lounging in a fucking waistcoat like some sort of Wildean wet dream.

He and Eliot ran into each other a few times after his actual admission, especially since their dorms were in the same building. Mostly at the raucous parties he threw in their common room, during the very few occasions he’d been dragged to them. Mostly with Margo somewhere nearby too, who still scared him just a little. Half the time Eliot was too drunk or too high (or both) to carry on an intelligent conversation for more than a minute, but he always seemed actually interested in how Quentin was doing.

Keen to delay having to write a love letter to Eliot, Quentin began typing up a reply to the requester: _Could you list a few details that you want included in the letter to personalise your message? Some ideas include why you wanted to a love letter written to Eliot in the first place, what you want him to feel when he reads it, et cetera._

His laptop dinged with a notification just a few minutes later.

_Dear Author,_

_I want Eliot Waugh to know that he is loved, and for him to feel loved. That’s all._

_Regards._

Quentin read it. And then read it again.

What the fuck kind of guidance was _that?_ As if that wasn’t the point of every love letter ever written. Besides, if what he’d heard (and seen, a few times) about Eliot and his dating habits were true, he was pretty sure Eliot knew he was loved.

Quentin sighed, pressing the heels of his palms to his eyes. He opened up a Word document, stared at the blinking cursor until he thought he was about five seconds away from saying _fuck it_ and shutting down the entire love-letter writing gig just to never have to look at that fucking cursor ever again, and started typing.

-

‘It’s delivered,’ Penny announced a few nights later at their dorm, the smell of Chinese food arriving with him. ‘Woah. You good there, Coldwater?’

‘I’m—fine. Yeah. Why?’

‘Why?’ he laughed. ‘Dude, I just saw your face flash through all the five stages of grief in like, two seconds.’

Quentin snatched up a takeout box and a pair of wooden chopsticks, stuffing a dumpling in his mouth. ‘Did not.’

‘Did too. Your face is like a book so open it’s splitting at the fucking spine.’

‘Is not.’

‘Well, it is to me. Wish you’d close it sometimes, man. I see too much.’

-

There was a PDF open on his computer crammed with words he was supposed to read by tomorrow’s class, but they were the least of Quentin’s worries. Penny had delivered the letter. Eliot had received it. Had he read it by now? Did he even open it? What did he think of it? Did he show it to Margo, or had he kept it to himself?

He was so caught up in his thoughts, he jumped when Penny, who had apparently entered their dorm, slammed down an envelope on Quentin’s desk.

Quentin eyed it suspiciously. ‘What’s this?’ Penny rolled his eyes like he was an idiot for not knowing.

‘It’s from Eliot, dumbass.’

_‘Eliot?’_

‘Yeah,’ he crossed his arms, as if he was very displeased about the fact. ‘He grabbed me by the fucking arm when I was walking out of class today and told me to give it to whoever wrote him that letter. He specifically said the writer, not whoever requested it. So.’ He uncrossed one of his arms and gestured. ‘All yours.’

Quentin eyed the envelope again, this time with more fear than suspicion. There was a brief moment of mental struggle where his anxiety and curiosity battled each other—but he found himself reaching for it in the end, carefully tearing open the seal.

The letter inside was neatly folded into thirds, and in loopy handwriting and black ink, it read:

_Dear ‘Anonymous,’_

_I have to admit, I’d kind of been waiting for a letter of my own since I’d heard about your whole thing. You’re kind of an enigma, you know—people pay you their (I’d say hard-earned but let’s be real, this is Columbia) money just to tell you their dirtiest, kinkiest little secrets, trust you to pass it safely onto their beloved, and you just walk around among us with that knowledge like a Catholic priest post-confession. Keep all those emails, by the way. Could make very good blackmail material if anyone here ends up becoming the President or something (although the very thought of anyone I know from here running our country has bile leaping into my throat)._

_Anyway, I’ve been looking forward to this moment for a long time. And I have to say, dear writer, I’m a bit disappointed._

_Not entirely your fault, of course. Maybe whoever sent you the request wasn’t imaginative enough. Maybe you just didn’t have good material to work with. Maybe you didn’t get paid enough for this shit and were salty about it? Maybe you looked up the wrong Eliot Waugh on Facebook during your research, and that’s why you’ve failed to reach my heart._

_But I’ve decided to offer you some critique, free of charge, so that your love-letter-writing business may continue to flourish in the future, and also so that the people who pay you actually feel like they’ve received their money’s worth._

_First off, printed? Really? I can’t even make charming marginalia on these without looking like I’m grading a paper. It’s the cardinal rule of love letters that they must be handwritten. You can see when they’ve been taking their time to write something, where they’d been rushing, like they were choosing their words carefully or couldn’t get them out fast enough, and when they’ve crossed something out hastily and leave you to wonder what it was that they didn’t want you to know. It’s a whole nother level of communication you’re leaving out._

_Piece of advice the second: leave out the cliches. I can tell you’re sort of making it up as you go, and so you tend to rely on tired metaphors and similes about how sparkly my eyes are or the irresistible allure of my lips (I don’t know if you know what I look like, but both of those are true) instead of making it a truly personal experience. Draw upon your own experiences. Unless you don’t have much of that either, in which case is unfortunate but does explain a lot. Love is personal. Make it so._

_I look forward to future improvements in your love-letter writing skills._

_Your benevolent editor and tentative pen-pal,_

_Eliot W._

‘Okay,’ Quentin said once he had finished reading, drawing out the syllable. In a voice level enough to surprise himself, he then declared: ‘What the fuck?’

He paused, letting the declaration mull in the otherwise silence of the room for a minute. Let the letter sink in. Returned his attention to his computer. Opened up a new Word Document. Began to write.

-

_Dear Eliot,_

_For starters, you should know that this is the first time anyone’s ever written back to me. First time for everything, I guess, but I can’t honestly say I expected the first letter of my own to be a such a scathing polemic of my writing. Not really the epitome of romance yourself, there. But if you get to critique me, I should have a chance to respond. So here it is._

_Listen, you get that the nature of this whole arrangement means that I have to maintain anonymity at all costs, right? Catholic confessions, et cetera. The reason I print these letters out is so nobody can recognise my handwriting, so sorry if Times New Roman isn’t romantic enough for you. Maybe I’ll try Garamond next time, see if I get any tips on my PayPal account._

_And okay, I’ll accept the cliches thing as a fair critique. I was procrastinating writing your letter, I was tired, it was late, my purple prose wasn’t the best it could be. And I do tend to lean towards literary shortcuts if I don’t really know the person. In my defence, people have very low standards for love letters (except for you, apparently) because the mere concept is enough to make most college students swoon at the Victorian-era romance of it all._

_Yes, I know what you look like. I don’t see you that often, though, we’re not in any classes together or anything. I hope you’ve quit smoking since the last time I saw you. If you haven’t, please do? It’s really bad for your health._

_Seriously though, I’m kinda amazed that somebody wrote to me. I don’t know if it’s a compliment or an insult on your character that you felt the need to. Like I said, no one’s ever done that before._

_P.S. Don’t call me ‘Anonymous,’ that makes me sound like I’m some kind of weird 4chan hacker dude. You can call me Q._

_Columbia’s aspiring love-letter connoisseur and your pen-pal,_

_Q._

‘Q,’ Eliot laughed quietly. ‘The most mysterious of all letters, don’t you think, Bambi? Well, second maybe only to X.’

‘Mm?’

‘Don’t worry about it. Doesn’t Todd have a fountain pen collection?’

-

‘Man,’ Penny groused. ‘If you two are gonna keep this up, you better start paying me the delivery fee, Coldwater.’

Quentin firmly pretended he hadn’t said anything, and took the envelope from Penny’s grip, which was embellished with a large, cursive ‘Q’—Jesus, had he used a fountain pen or something? He fought down a grin and tried to not look so giddy as he tore open the seal.

_Dear Q,_

_You’re fairly scathing yourself to suggest that I am anything but the epitome of romance. Trust me, if I was trying to seduce you, you’d know. Your life would retain its sparkle for decades afterwards. On your last point—about me feeling the need to write back—I guess it’s true to some extent. Well, I bond fast. Time is an illusion, and so on and so forth. There was just something very endearing about the subpar quality of the love letter. Has nobody really ever written back before me? This cohort is perhaps more hopeless than I thought._

_On the smoking, I am trying to quit, have been successful for the most part. Believe me, Margo (if you know her) has lectured me on numerous occasions all about its dangerous effects, but despite her intentions, I find it difficult to take her words to heart when I remember we went on a two-week bender in Ibiza last year together. You wouldn’t believe some of the things we got up to, but what happens in Ibiza …_

-

‘Are you okay?’ Margo asked from across the room. Eliot looked up.

‘Fine,’ he replied, but her frown only deepened.

‘You’re smiling. While reading.’

‘Contrary to pop science, it is in fact possible for people to do two things at once.’

‘That’s not the point, babe, and you know it.’ Eliot quickly folded up the letter. It was still printed, for fuck’s sake, but he did look upon it with admittedly more fondness than before. ‘And don’t think I haven’t noticed,’ Margo was continuing, ‘you keep meeting up with, what’s his name, Penny. You’re not sleeping with him, are you?’

It was his turn to frown. ‘No.’

‘Someone else, then,’ she pushed, abandoning her homework and moving towards him on the couch. ‘One of your first-year boy toys. Freshman flavour of the month?’

He tucked the letter into his jacket as she approached, trying to make it look casual. He even rolled his eyes a little. ‘Don’t call them _boy toys,_ Bambi.’

‘You’re keeping things from me,’ she pouted, hanging over him. ‘Come on, tell Mommy Margo everything. Especially what’s going on with—’ she reached into his pocket with a speed he’d only previously witnessed as her position as Welters team captain ‘—this!’

She held up the letter victoriously. ‘Dear Eliot,’ she began reading out loud theatrically, ‘I am—’ she barely got through the second word before Eliot snatched it back, trying not to look too mortified about it as he slumped back into the couch, but the teasing smile was already on her face.

‘Eliot Waugh,’ she grinned, hands on her hips. ‘Please tell me you’re not exchanging analog sexts with some hapless English major.’

‘Margo—and I say this with the utmost love—you are dead to me.’

‘Sure I am.’ She was still annoyingly delighted. He ignored her.

‘Quentin!’ he called out instead, waving his hand at the slouched figure that had entered the common room. Quentin jumped, like a startled rabbit, and took a second before he squeaked out a ‘Hey, Eliot.’

‘Quentin,’ Margo waved him over, plopping down on the couch next to Eliot. ‘Isn’t Penny your roommate?’

Eliot sat up. ‘He is?’ To Margo, ‘And you didn’t tell me about this before now?’

Margo raised an eyebrow at him. ‘I thought I was dead to you?’

‘And I congratulate you on your resurrection,’ he replied without missing a beat. ‘Is he?’ he asked, to Quentin.

‘Uh, yeah.’ Quentin tentatively took a seat on the armchair. He must’ve just come back from a class; he could tell by the messenger bag slung around his shoulders, the cup of coffee he was holding, which was no doubt cold by now. ‘Why?’

Margo turned to fix Quentin with an indignant look. ‘Eliot’s got a secret he’s not telling me.’

‘Oh, um. Okay?’

Eliot sighed, deep and dramatic as he could. ‘Fine,’ he drawled, and swung his legs onto Margo’s lap. ‘You know the guy who gets commissions to write love letters for people?’ Out of the corner of his eye, he swore he thought Quentin almost dropped his cup, but when he looked, it was set on the table.

‘I’ve heard about that,’ Margo looked thoughtful. ‘I’ve always wondered who it was. They must have some serious blackmail material about the people here. Wait,’ she said. ‘So you got a letter?’

‘Well—yeah, but it’s complicated. I may have written back to him, because I was interested in his whole thing, you know, in an academic and professional sort of way, and then he wrote back, and then I wrote back, rinse and repeat for two-ish weeks, and now we may have a weird correspondence thing going on. Not, just to clarify, professional in nature anymore.’

Margo was nodding slowly as she took it in, drumming her nails on Eliot’s thigh, and Quentin was—well, the cup was back in his hands, and covering half his face, so he couldn’t really tell.

‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Are we sure it’s even a him?’

‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘Penny slipped up once, said, and I quote, “I think he spent more time on this letter than studying for his American Literature exams, so let’s hope it was worth it.” He wouldn’t tell me any more details,’ he added, before Margo could ask. Quentin made a noise akin to a cough, tucking his legs up to his chest.

‘So,’ she clasped her hands together. ‘He’s a guy who takes an American Literature class. I mean, it does narrow down the population of Columbia significantly, but still, that’s hundreds of people, especially since we don’t know what year he’s in. Do you want me to find out?’ she looked at Eliot with a mischievous glint in her eye. ‘You know I could find out. I’m excellent at this sort of research.’

‘I know you could, Bambi,’ he said sweetly, smiling at her, ‘but I think we should put a hold on that idea for now. Let’s wait until something interesting happens, if it even happens.’

‘And Penny hasn’t said anything about this at all?’ she asked Quentin. He shrugged with one shoulder.

‘I—I don’t know,’ he spluttered. ‘Penny and I kinda operate on a strictly need-to-know basis.’

Margo hummed. ‘Unfortunate. Well,’ she shoved Eliot’s legs off of her. ‘Let me know when the letters start crossing into 50 Shades territory. As much as this intrigues me, I don’t really know if I can stand reading about your mushy feelings without a significant increase in my blood alcohol content.’

Quentin choked. Eliot smiled.

‘On that note,’ he said to Margo’s retreating figure, ‘how was your day, Quentin?’

-

_Dear Q,_

_Maybe it’s something about the nature of this relationship, the anonymity (one-sided as though it may be) making me susceptible to exposing my deep, dark secrets like I’m whispering them to a hole in a tree then filling it up with mud. The point is, I’m about to say something very personal now, so here goes: I’m from a farm. In Indiana. Shocking, I know. I can drive a tractor but if you ask me to, I’m about 95% sure I’ll pass out from sheer nausea. God, I might be getting a migraine right now just thinking about horticulture and the smell of manure._

_It is at this point that I must remind you that I’m only telling you all this because you’re supposed to be anonymous and Margo is the only other one who knows about this and if you breach this pen pal-to-pal confidentiality you can expect to hear from my lawyer._

_Threat aside, what I’m saying is that if anyone doesn’t belong at Columbia, it should be me. And I guess the second, more profound truth I’m trying to tell you is that you aren’t alone. It certainly feels that way, sometimes, being surrounded by people who either clearly got in through generations’ worth of legacy admissions or clearly got into every Ivy school and chose to come to New York for some reason. Personally, my primary reason for coming here was because I wanted to get to wherever the opposite of rural Indiana was, to leave everything from that part of my life behind so that I could pursue the full-time creative project of becoming me. Getting a full ride was convenient, too, but that also means I have to keep up a good enough GPA (not that hard) and attendance rate (exponentially more difficult)._

_I do let everyone else keep thinking I grew up summering with the Kennedys and so forth. I won’t let you think that, though, not when you’ve told me you don’t think you deserve to be here because everyone else looks like they belong. You’re smart, Q, but that’s a preposterous thing to think. ‘They’ are just those of us whose parents could afford good tutors and college application coaches and expensive summer schools. Even Margo went to a private all-girls prep school. I guess that does leave just you and me in the corner failing to network enough with them, the former farm boy and (I say this with the utmost fondness) the high-strung supernerd._

_Sincerely, with surprise that I haven’t passed out yet recounting my farm days here,_

_Eliot W._

-

_Dear Eliot,_

_Honestly, it kinda makes sense when I think about it. You, I mean. Former farm boy, got into Columbia on an academic scholarship, all that. There’s something about you that seems very deliberate, if that makes sense. Like, you put work into being who you are—you construct yourself the way people put together a red carpet outfit or a fine dining menu. I think that’s admirable. You don’t need to be from a Los Angeles prep school to impress people, you’re already impressive before people discover what high school you went to._

_I know you’re trying to pretend that Eliot Waugh rose out of the rubble of all those things you burned to the ground, but I don’t see it that way. Who you were before—I think all those things still are you, you know? You can’t really put a part of yourself into a vacuum like that and pretend that has no bearing on who you are anymore, whether it was 5 years ago or 10 years ago or even in a fucking alternate timeline. You are the sum of all your parts, and then some more._

_Anyway, your letter did make me feel better. I don’t know, imposter syndrome is a bitch and self-doubt even more of a bitch and my brain breaks sometimes trying to keep on top of all of them. Thanks for telling me, I really appreciate it._

_Promising to never ask advice on how to stop killing my houseplants (no matter how much I want to because what the fuck, I thought cacti were supposed to be easy to take care of),_

_Q._

-

‘Quentin, are you working on anything important right now?’ Eliot asked across the table. They were hanging out, because that was apparently a thing they did now on a regular basis.

(It’d started when Quentin was working at an assignment, half feeling like his head would explode if he had to read the term ‘Gothic double’ one more time, when Eliot showed up with two coffees and a danish.

‘What’s this?’ Quentin had asked. Eliot firmly shoved the coffee and the pastry at him, setting the other coffee on the table and sitting down across from him.

‘For you,’ he replied, like it was obvious. ‘You were working here before I left for class, and now I’m back and you’re still working. I figured you needed a break.’

‘Oh,’ he said, dumbly, feeling something warm pool at the pit of his stomach. ‘Thanks.’

And it somehow became a thing—whenever their schedules happened to line up, they had their little table in the corner of the common room to study or chat for a while. Margo joined them sometimes, and Penny threatened to join them with an annoyingly knowing smirk on his face, but Quentin had grown to treasure these moments of quiet companionship—the easy conversations, the comfortable silences.)

‘Nothing important, what’s up?’

‘You remember my, ah, pen pal I told you about a few weeks ago?’

Quentin was silently thankful he hadn’t been taking a drink from his coffee (that Eliot had bought him) then, because he would’ve choked for sure. ‘Yeah.’

‘I’m faced with a dilemma,’ he said pensively, fiddling with a pen. He opened and closed his mouth several times, then said, ‘I want to meet him. I know,’ he said, misinterpreting the abrupt look Quentin gave him as cautioning and not mild dread, ‘I know, it’s risky.’ He leaned forward, knitting his fingers and resting his chin there. ‘What Quentin Coldwater do in my position?’

He pretended to consider it, took a sip of the coffee to look pensive (and also to avoid the intensity of Eliot’s gaze), and lied. ‘Quentin Coldwater wouldn’t even manage to get himself into your position in the first place.’

Eliot leant back against the chair and groaned. ‘You’re no help. I might even ask you to leave. This is a serious matter.’

‘Uh, I was here first.’

‘I don’t want to scare him off,’ he mused mostly to himself now, since he seemed oblivious to the fact that Quentin had said anything, ‘he’s kind of like an easily frightened rabbit.’

‘Well, he’s been keeping his identity pretty secret so far, right? Over half a year now, and nobody knows except for Penny?’ Eliot nodded. Quentin shrugged. ‘He might not be ready for it, then. To—to reveal himself to you like that.’

Eliot frowned at him from under a curl that had fallen into his eyes. Quentin had half a desire to push it back. ‘I wouldn’t tell anybody if he didn’t want that,’ he said earnestly.

‘Maybe it’s more than that, maybe he—I don’t know,’ Quentin cut himself off, wishing down the heat rising to his face. Could acutely feel Eliot’s eyes on him, did his best to ignore it. ‘Don’t,’ he mumbled softly, despite himself, ‘don’t you think it’ll change things?’

Eliot was quiet for a while. Pondering on it, probably, but Quentin was trying to catch every shift in his face and body to make something out of it—what, he didn’t know. Reassurance, maybe. A rejection.

He gave none of that to Quentin, and instead a question: ‘Wouldn’t it be worth it to find out?’

In the span of maybe a second, his heart leapt into his throat, then to the bottom of his stomach, then back again. ‘Maybe you’re right,’ he swallowed.

‘Maybe _you’re_ right,’ Eliot countered, nonchalant as ever, pushing that curl back himself. ‘I think it’s a bit early to bring up meeting in person. It would be a big request to ask of him. Oh, you don’t actually have to leave,’ he said to Quentin beginning to packing up his books. ‘You’ve helped since then. Besides, I quite like having you around.’

Quentin swung the strap of his bag around his shoulder, ducking his head to hide the embarrassingly genuine smile on his face. ‘Me too, but I actually should go now. Early class tomorrow, and all that.’

Eliot smiled back at him, a disarming sort of gentleness in the soft tilt of his mouth. ‘Alright then, Quentin. Until next time.’

Catching one last look back at Eliot, Quentin went back to his dorm, thinking to himself that at least he could work on finishing his letter to Eliot with some privacy there.

-

_… Your teen years really are some of the worst years of your life. Sure, all your problems seem so trivial in retrospect to crushing adulthood, but that doesn’t erase all the shit you felt back then. I checked myself into a psychiatric hospital when I was sixteen. I’m better now, but my dad still worries a lot. I worry about it sometimes, too, when I can feel myself on the cusp of slipping back into old habits._

_… I don’t know what kind of God would make me both gay and live in rural Indiana, but my unfortunate placement on that Venn diagram is enough summary of my high school years. Although being able to drive stick does seem to impress some guys, so I guess something good came out of it eventually. Also, please take your meds. And tell me if it all gets too bad, too much, whatever. I can’t do much, but you know I’ll always write back._

_… I saw you at the party you threw at the common room a few days ago. I think you’re the kind of person who is very good at looking like they’re having fun. Is something going on, or do you usually spend parties making sure everyone else is having fun that you forget to genuinely enjoy it yourself too? Pretty Gatsby-esque of you, except for the not drinking alcohol at your own parties thing. You don’t seem to adhere to that particular standard._

_… You might be just a little too perceptive for your own good, Q. Honoured to receive a comparison to Gatsby, but only if you’ll take the role of Nick Carraway. I’d rather have no one else write a Great American Novel composed entirely of waxing homoerotic poetry about me. You should have said hi, by the way, and saved me from drinking that last tequila shot. Every day I march closer and closer to fatal liver damage, thusly straying further from the glorious too-young death I’ve always imagined for myself. (The purple prose is a smokescreen. I probably do have some extent of liver damage at this point, and I am loathe to admit I’m genuinely scared about it.)_

_… Eliot, I promise to talk to you the next time I see you at a party if you also promise to not drink, okay? I’m not really one for parties, though you probably knew that already. I can’t really dance without drinking enough to prepare myself for the embarrassment it will be, and too much alcohol doesn’t really mix well with my meds. I’ll find you, and we can not drink together. I think we’ll manage to find a way to have fun without the alcohol._

_… Midterms are coming up, which means I’m either putting a hold to the parties for now or figuring out whose dick I need to suck around here to keep up a satisfactory GPA. I’m fond of the latter option myself. How are you feeling about it all? You’ll do great, my intelligent, brilliant Q. Take care of yourself._

_… God, don’t make me think about midterms in my allocated daily Responding to Eliot’s Letters time. This is supposed to be relaxing. But that being said, if you’ve got any hot takes about Shakespeare, now would be the time to drop them. I am actually feeling pretty okay, though. You help. Talking to you, I mean. Sometimes I read over the old letters you’ve sent—is it weird to say your handwriting is calming?_

_… Honestly, all my literature-related hot takes are about homosexual subtext, so probably not that helpful there. I did play Mercutio in high school, though. I tried to make a move on Romeo, because with theatre guys there’s usually a better than average chance, but unfortunately he turned out to be straight and in a committed relationship with the Nurse. He was so aggressively not-homophobic about it too, like reassuring me constantly about how capital-o Okay he was with it. I did a production of Les Mis in high school as well. I showed Margo a video of it. Maybe I’ll show you one day, too._

_… I couldn’t look her in the eye for weeks. God, it was so embarrassing. I’ve never told anybody that story before. I half can’t believe I told you just now. You know, sometimes it feels like we’ve known each other for fifty years rather than a few months._

_… I get that. I feel that way too, sometimes._

-

Eliot looked up from his position on the floor when the footsteps neared, hoping he didn’t look as pathetic as he felt. Sometime between now and a few glasses of wine ago, he’d somehow ended up sliding down from the armchair to the floor, at eye level with the flickering of the fireplace in the common room. That combined with his hair, unkempt and unruly from repeatedly running his hands through them, didn’t give him much hope on the not looking pathetic part.

‘Uh, I guess this is what we’re doing this now?’ Quentin asked down at him, in that dry, matter-of-fact way Eliot secretly found funnier that he would admit. Before Eliot could come up with a witty response, he had dropped his messenger bag and settled down on the floor next to him, pulling his knees up to his chest.

‘I’ll fetch you a glass,’ Eliot said, and did. Quentin accepted the drink, though not without wincing slightly when he took a gulp of it.

‘El,’ he began, and the nickname shouldn’t have warmed him as much as it did, but. ‘Is everything okay?’

He took a sip to avoid his eyes. ‘Why wouldn’t I be?’

Quentin laughed, not unkindly. ‘Because you’re drinking wine alone on a Thursday evening?’

‘Not alone now,’ he smiled pointedly at Quentin’s glass—a weak excuse, but he graciously allowed it and smiled back. They clinked their glasses unceremoniously and drank quietly for a moment.

‘I,’ Eliot started, because for some reason he felt like he owed Quentin more than a flimsy deflection for an answer. ‘It’s, just.’ He waved vaguely at something. ‘My father, he, um. Well, let’s just say he’s not the most tolerant about the whole me being gay thing.’

‘Oh,’ Quentin said. ‘I’m sorry.’

He waved again. ‘No matter. I was getting over it, too, but he decided to call me six times, which I obviously ignored, but it turns out he also left me six voicemails of both increasing profanity and homophobia.’ Eliot had thought hard about deleting the voicemails, he really did. He probably should have, to stop himself from listening to it over and over again. He ignored the feeling of his phone in his pocket digging into his thigh and instead watched Quentin’s knuckles whiten around the glass, grip tightening then loosening. Not fumbling, not out of uncertainty, but something more angry and resentful. He considered it with mild wonder.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said again, voice tinged with that same quiet fury. ‘You really don’t deserve that.’

Eliot considered that too. ‘It shouldn’t matter,’ he said eventually, ‘it shouldn’t matter what he thinks of me.’

‘What matters is that he hurt you,’ he replied with a vehement seriousness, and Eliot turned to look at him. He seemed to catch himself, and paused, his next words coming out softer. ‘You can’t take a punch and expect it to not bruise.’

Well. Eliot wasn’t sure he was sufficiently drunk enough to even begin to process that, so he drained his glass instead. ‘Let’s talk about something different,’ he said, trying to sound aloof. ‘Did I ever tell you about my first real crush?’

The corners of Quentin’s mouth tugged up gently. ‘No.’

So Eliot told him. He took out the more nasty parts and heightened the good ones, trying to let himself get lost in the anecdote. Quentin, of course, was a perfect audience member, nodding and humming at the right parts, laughing at his poor attempts at jokes, blushing in the most delightful way when Eliot leaned in for the more salacious details. When he was done, he pulled a story in turn out of Quentin, who was a good but reluctant storyteller, about his tentative first crush and childhood-now-adulthood best friend called Julia. It ended with much more success and happiness than his story had—she was in Yale now, and this was the longest they’d ever spent apart from each other since they met. Eliot tried to tease him about something to do with the clicheness of getting together with your childhood best friend, but Quentin just laughed it off and knocked his knee with Eliot. Then just. Left it there. Were knees usually this warm? Had they been sitting this close when they started?

‘I’m glad you’re here,’ Eliot admitted, surprising himself with the truth of it. He was.

Quentin looked mildly surprised by it too, though at the fact that Eliot had actually said it out loud more than anything. Then he broke out into a smile, beautiful and bashful. ‘I’m glad you’re here too. I can’t believe it sometimes,’ he said, somber despite the smile on his face. He was staring into the last remaining embers of the fire. ‘Why would Eliot Waugh want to be here with me when he could be anywhere else? Talk to me, when he could talk to anyone else?’

Eliot opened his mouth, but couldn’t think of an answer and frankly wasn’t sure he wanted to right now, so he let the question hang thick and heavy in the air. He got the sense that they were talking about different things anyway.

‘I’m sorry about your dad,’ Quentin said quietly.

He shook his head. ‘Let’s not,’ Eliot moved to refill Quentin’s glass, ‘talk.’

Quentin hadn’t protested when Eliot filled up his glass, but set it down on the floor beside his thigh. He was fiddling with the rim of it—twitchy in a way that he was thinking hard about something. Eliot found it unfairly endearing, the alcohol thrumming beneath his skin serving a convenient excuse for him shamelessly taking in every minute curve and plane of his face. Quentin turned to look at him with his mouth opening to say something—then stopped, something startled in his eye as if he was surprised to discover that Eliot was already looking.

‘Hey,’ Eliot smiled, too tipsy to care how softly, tenderly the word had come out.

‘Hey,’ he breathed. ‘Um.’

‘What’re you thinking so hard about there, Coldwater?’

He licked his lips. ‘I thought—I thought you didn’t want to talk.’

‘Well, if you insist,’ he said, and leaned in.

Quentin kissed shyly, carefully, as if he had a secret to hide. His skin was warm where Eliot’s thumb brushed along his jawline, and he briefly wondered if Quentin would mind if he pressed his tongue against the seam of his mouth.

But it turned out he didn’t have to wonder at all, because all of a sudden Quentin was surging forward and his fingers were clutching at Eliot’s collar and there were teeth pressing into his bottom lip and oh god, he was so _warm_ and Eliot had slid his hand around to the nape of his neck and he couldn’t, couldn’t think, couldn’t make sense of anything except for a searing conviction crackling in his veins and his fingertips that he had, he _had_ to get Quentin’s shirt off somehow—

And then it was over. It was over, leaving Eliot breathlessly trying to realign the world back together with the imprints of Quentin’s hands still burning red-hot on his skin.

‘Sorry,’ Quentin was gasping out, which Eliot might’ve accepted were it not for his inability to process anything past the rasp in his voice, the red shine of his mouth. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘ _Christ_ ,’ Eliot said, unthinkingly. Then, catching the distressed expression on his face, ‘You have nothing to apologise for. I, um. I started it.’

‘I,’ Quentin started, then stopped. He still looked so distraught that Eliot forced himself to regain some sense of self-control, to catch his breath.

‘Quentin,’ he tried to placate, ‘you’re not the first straight guy to throw himself at me when he’s had a bit too much to drink, okay? It’s no big deal.’

Quentin didn’t answer him or meet his eyes, crease still present between his brows. Eliot watched his chest heave, struck with a sudden strange feeling in his stomach, as though there was some horrible inside joke he was missing out on.

-

_Dear Q,_

_How are you? We don’t ask that enough of each other, in my opinion. It’s frankly underrated as a gateway to honest conversation, but we tend to go straight for the jugular in these letters in terms of honesty. It seems like a superficial question with really one or two socially acceptable answers, but I’ve never been one for being socially acceptable or superficial, so here’s my answer to that question (assuming, of course, you ask it back): not that good, actually._

_I think I fucked up something with my friend the other night. I don’t want to divulge too much of the dirty details, but ‘weird’ isn’t accurate enough to describe the atmosphere afterwards. Jarring, maybe. Things between us, it’s all come so easily. It’s like when you’re in school and you understand a concept before everyone else, when it just clicks and you get it immediately for some reason. We just got each other, like being friends was the obvious conclusion given who we were as people. And then—here comes the dirty details I said I wasn’t going to give—we kissed, and he backpedalled. I would get it if it was some straight guy panic after kissing a dude for the first time, but I’m not entirely sure it was just that. It felt, like I said, jarring. It felt like he knew something more than I could possibly comprehend, like I was just another kid in the class who didn’t get the concept yet. I haven’t seen him since (I’m writing this to you the morning after it happened), and to be fair, we don’t usually run into each other unless we’re actively trying. But also to be fair, we usually actively try._

_That’s why I’m not doing so good. He and you are the two things that manage to make me feel better in a constructive sort of way, not just a drink-and-try-to-forget-about-it way, so a whole half of my healthy support system is unavailable at the moment. I’ll wrap this pitiful letter the same way I began it: how are you? I hope life’s been treating you better that what I’ve recounted here, although I’m sure it’ll work itself out eventually. Don’t worry yourself too much._

_Yours sincerely,_

_Eliot W._

-

Quentin couldn’t focus. His American Literature assignment was due tomorrow and he couldn’t fucking focus, and it was Eliot’s fault. Every time he managed to get through a sentence, his eyes would traitorously flick over to the letter Penny had delivered him that morning, just to check that it was there and that it was real, and if he’d gotten started, well, he might as well finish the thing. Of course he had to read the entire letter again.

Despite being holed up in his dorm all day, he told himself he wasn’t avoiding Eliot—not exactly. He did have an assignment to finish, after all. It was just that he didn’t know if he could handle seeing Eliot for the next few days, wasn’t sure if he could handle it if Eliot marched up to him in their spot in the common room and pretend that the previous night had never happened.

And god, did Quentin want to explain it all. Explain to Eliot how the moment he’d gotten a taste of his mouth, of the wine they’d been sharing, Quentin had been struck with a longing so visceral it ruptured from him, a longing for something _more than this, more, more—_ but he couldn’t. He had already taken more from Eliot than he should have ever asked for. He just couldn’t.

A knock on the door startled him out of his train of thought, and he hastily shoved the letter underneath a pile of printed and highlighted PDF documents. And when he stumbled over to answer the knock, it single-handedly convinced him karma was indeed real and the biggest bitch to ever bitch.

‘Uh,’ Eliot Waugh said, hovering about in the doorway like he wished he could levitate away to literally anywhere else, ‘hey.’

‘Um,’ he replied. Eliot honest-to-god _fumbled_. Eliot Waugh didn’t fumble.

‘I was supposed to talk to Penny about something—school stuff—he told me he would be here?’

Quentin glanced at the clock. ‘He’s usually here by now, he’s probably running a bit late. Um—you can, you can come in and wait, if you want to.’

Eliot looked at him for a split second like he was a madman, but, seeming to steel himself for it, crossed the threshold into the dorm.

‘Make yourself comfortable,’ Quentin said, avoiding eye contact and mumbling something about getting a drink but intending to make a game plan. He could bring up what happened last night casually, offhandedly. He could do that. No big deal. What if Eliot didn’t talk want to talk about it, what if he brushed it under the rug with a casual wave of his hand? Maybe Quentin should wait for him to bring it up first. Or maybe they should just sit in absolute and uncomfortable silence, saying nothing to each other and waiting for Penny to come back. That last option was admittedly tempting. He took a deep breath. It was fine. It was just Eliot.

When he returned from the mini-kitchen, Eliot’s back was to him, shoulders hunched over to look at something on Quentin’s desk. He was oddly still.

‘El?’ he said, frowning, moving over to see what he was looking at. He was reading something, maybe one of Quentin’s annotated notes strewn out across the desk—

And just like that, his mouth went bone dry.

Eliot had found it. He had seen it, he’d seen right through the shit job Quentin had done a moment before trying to hide the letter—Eliot’s letter. Eliot had seen it. He was reading it. Quentin could hear the cogs turning and clicking in his brain, each new connected piece in the puzzle marked with a dreadful twist to his stomach and a pound to his heart.

‘Quentin,’ Eliot said, breathless, like the air had punched the word out of him. ‘Q,’ he said again, just for good measure.

He swallowed the thumping of his heart down. No point in hiding it now. ‘Yeah.’

Eliot huffed out a laugh, wisped and incredulous. ‘It’s you. It’s—I hoped—’ the corner of his mouth tugged up, and he cut himself off. He met his eyes for the first time since Quentin had entered the room, but he glanced away just as quickly to stare ardently back at the letter, tracing his fingers over his own handwriting.

‘I’m glad it’s you, Quentin,’ he admitted quietly. ‘I didn’t want it to be anyone else.’

‘Oh,’ he said, feeling as though his ribcage had suddenly grown smaller to squeeze on his heart. ‘Oh.’ Then he laughed too, short and sharp at first, growing bigger and bigger until he could feel it vibrating in his ribs. Eliot watched him laugh, faint smile on his face like he was enraptured by it, like Quentin was something wondrous and miraculous, like he couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing but didn’t want to miss a second of it.

-

_Dear Eliot,_

_I never did find out who requested to write your letter. All I remember is that they wanted to tell you that you were loved. I thought you already knew that, at the time._

_You know, I was scared shitless about writing a letter to you. I ignored the email for days hoping it would magically go away somehow. It was just so daunting; writing a love letter to Eliot Waugh that’ll move his heart seemed like a fucking Herculean task. And—and I hope you get what this means, but it was_ you. _It was you. Am I making sense? You, beautiful and spectacular and untouchable, the way you move like you’re minding a crown on your head, like every heartbeat of yours is punctuated with a question mark, the way you wear your clothes like it’s because your skin is barely keeping you from spilling over._

_You’re still all those things. Beautiful and spectacular and ~~untouchable~~ … I don’t know. Sometimes, you look at me in this certain way that makes me think you look just a little more touchable than you did a moment before._

_Sorry. I’m not making sense. I’m not even drunk. This is all just pure sleep deprivation and the high of submitting a final assignment. I’m euphoric from never having to read a William Carlos Williams poem ever again._

_Feels weird to sign off with my actual name—in a good way, though. Really good. I hope the handwriting isn’t too disappointing._

_Yours,_

_Quentin C._

-

Quentin Coldwater was on his bed, which meant that Eliot had already achieved most of his goals for the day, and maybe also in life. His hands were flitting restlessly between the many, many letters scattered about the bed, picking one up and skimming it just enough to relive the moment captured in it, then putting it down and immediately reaching for another moment.

‘I mean, I guess I knew subconsciously that you kept them,’ he said, ‘but it’s a whole nother thing to actually see it.’

Eliot felt himself smile and moved to join him on the bed, peering over Quentin’s shoulder as he lounged back. ‘It does look like I keep a very expansive collection of essays, though. Being printed, and all that.’

‘Yeah,’ Quentin laughed, a weird nervousness to it, then, ‘except one, though.’

‘Indeed,’ Eliot said, because he wasn’t sure what to say. Quentin didn’t elaborate either, though the nervous energy was still taut in his movements as he gathered up all the letters around them into a single pile.

‘So, um,’ Quentin said, indecipherable look on his face, ‘it—it really happened.’ It was a question.

‘It happened,’ he replied, watching him carefully. Something was beginning to form in his stomach, something writhing and cowardly. It was unpleasant, and Eliot wondered if it was dread.

‘It,’ Quentin stuttered out. ‘All of it. This. Us—this is gonna sound.’ He paused, inhaled deep. ‘This is gonna sound dumb, but—us. Think about it.’

Eliot sat up. ‘What—’

‘I mean—us, we work. I’m saying,’ he said, gazing at Eliot with hopeful eyes, ‘why don’t we give it a shot?’

Quentin looked beautiful and Eliot’s chest felt too tight, like one wrong move and his lungs would squeeze the words out his throat. He coughed.

‘Would you,’ he said slowly, mindful not to gag on that anxious thing still squirming in his stomach and crawling its way up his throat, ‘Would you still think the same if we hadn’t met the way we did?’

Quentin paused. ‘What do you mean?’ God, how could a sentence be said so quietly and still manage to hit Eliot’s gut with the force it did?

‘Just, think about it—’ he continued, fucking _hating_ himself for it, for fuck’s sake, stop talking, what the hell do you think you’re doing—‘We started talking because someone paid you to. What if you had a choice? We weren’t friends, before you wrote me that letter. What if it remained that way forever? Would you have ever decided to talk to me then? Would we still have found each other? Would you still choose me?’

‘You think I haven’t chosen you already?’ Quentin said, and the quiet ferocity in his voice surprised Eliot enough to look up at him. The hopeful glimmer in his eyes had turned into more of a glint, something sharp and on the edge of igniting. ‘El, I could have _chosen_ to not write back to the letters you sent me. Fuck, I could’ve chosen to not to reply to any of your letters in the first place. What does it matter how we met? We know each other, we know how to love each other—it’s here in written form, Eliot,’ he gripped at their letters tighter. ‘Who gets that kind of proof of concept?’

Eliot could feel his heart beating against his ribcage, hear the blood rushing in his ears. ‘Just,’ he stammered out over the noise, ‘just ask me when we’re not holding a novella’s worth of lo—of letters between us, okay? It’s—It’s not making us think clearly.’

There was a long silence. He could _feel_ Quentin deflate next to him. Eventually, he murmured, defeated: ‘I—okay. Okay. I’m sorry.’

All of that brightness and fire that was there a moment ago, snuffed out. And Eliot had been the one to do it.

-

Naturally, Eliot turned to alcohol after that. So much for not getting liver damage. He even let Todd join him in drinking for a bit in the common room, though it was more allowing Todd to exist kinda-somewhat adjacently to his existence. Eventually, the activity in the common room ebbed out, the edges of the room ebbed out, and Eliot was once again alone and much, much more drunk than he should have been.

And once again, Quentin had found him. In the back of his mind (the front of it was occupied screaming _Quentin-Quentin-Quentin_ ), he supposed that Quentin had come back from wherever he was so late to avoid running into Eliot on his way to his dorm. He was bitter at the idea of it, though he arguably had no right to be.

Quentin startled, took in the sight of Eliot drunkenly sprawled out across the couch, and walked over.

‘Q,’ Eliot smiled, rolling the letter in his mouth, revelling in its taste. Quentin leaned over him and made a move as if to help him get to a sitting position. But he stopped halfway through, and Eliot found himself missing something he never even had.

‘You’re—drunk. Like, really drunk.’

‘I have to be,’ he groaned. ‘I’ll hate myself too much if I remember any of what happened today in the morning. Even my powers of repression has limits.’

Quentin’s mouth set in a firm, displeased line. He was crouching beside the couch so that he was eye level with Eliot, looking him over like he was trying to decide what to do with him.

‘Did you mean it?’ Eliot blurted out, because he was drunk. ‘What you said, before. About us. Proof of concept.’

Quentin opened his mouth, taken aback but recomposing himself. ‘Yeah,’ he said, sure and bold and courageous. ‘I meant it. I think we can work.’

‘I don’t believe you.’ It was true. It was the most honest thing he’d said tonight. ‘I don’t believe you,’ he said again, though with the way Quentin was looking at him, he felt like he could believe it a little more. God. He was so close.

‘You’re shaking,’ Quentin said, quiet and soft. Oh, Eliot realised, in a dull sort of way. He was shaking. ‘You should go to bed. I’ll—I’ll help you.’

He did help him stagger back into his dorm, pulling the covers back and handling him into the bed. Not that Eliot was protesting, but he sure wasn’t making it easy for Quentin.

‘Where’s Margo when you need her?’ he mumbled indignantly as he let himself fall back onto the pillow. I’m sure she’d be delighted to find out my pen pal turned out to be you.’

‘She’ll be here in the morning,’ he smoothed a hand over Eliot’s hair. ‘You can’t tell her though, okay? It’s still a secret.’

‘Secret,’ he repeated, like it was a funny thing. ‘I’m good at secrets. Here’s one: I lost my virginity in an online chatroom when I was twelve. Here’s another: I still smoke sometimes and Margo doesn’t know.’

‘I know,’ Quentin said gently. ‘Your letters smell like cigarette ash sometimes.’

‘My only friend in middle school told me he was gay and I dumped a milkshake on his head.’ Quentin was tucking him in proper at this point, pulling the blanket over his chest and shoulders. Eliot grabbed at its edges and let his eyes close, hearing Quentin move towards the direction of the door.

‘I’ve never,’ he said, the words tumbling out and only vaguely in Quentin’s direction, ‘I’ve never loved anyone like I love you.’

It was a confession, but not the kind with romantic music swelling in the background with the golden hues of the sun. It was sitting alone in a church pew with your head bowed and hands clasped, mouthing the words because you’re still scared someone might hear it kind of confession.

He opened his eyes. Quentin was still here, motionless in the doorway, hand frozen on the doorknob. His hair was falling into his face. Eliot wanted to sweep it aside so he could see what his expression looked like.

‘Eliot,’ he whispered. He sounded wrecked.

‘Come here,’ Eliot said, because he was drunk and prone to making stupid decisions. And Quentin—Quentin went, like he’d been waiting for the word, like a moth finally allowed to go to the light of a streetlamp, crawling into Eliot’s bed on top of the sheets to face him.

‘El,’ he whispered, reverent and fierce. ‘I have to—you can’t—you can’t tell me you don’t believe me when I say we work and then—say things like that. You have to tell me what you want.’

‘I want,’ Eliot started, dizzying himself with it. He swallowed past the dry lump in his throat, reaching out. Quentin let him, let Eliot wrap an arm around his neck and rested a hand over his waist in turn. Now came the part of the prayer where you finished giving your thanks and confessing your sins and got to the part where you got to ask, to wish, to beg. ‘Tell me you love me.’ He rubbed his thumb over the side of his neck, relishing in the way Quentin shivered at it. ‘Tell me that there’s no one else you’ve ever loved like this, that you’ve never been loved the way I love you.’

‘I love you,’ Quentin said into the hollow of his neck, with the cadence one might use to say the sky is blue, pigs can’t fly, one plus one is two, like it was just another universally known constant of the cosmos.

Eliot felt the corners of his mouth tug up, and pulled him closer. His brave, brave Q. ‘Tell me when I’m awake,’ he murmured, chin on the crown of his head, ‘and when I’m sober.’

‘I will,’ he promised, with a startling, intoxicating intensity. Eliot hummed.

‘Stay?’

He smiled wryly. ‘Not tonight. Sorry.’

‘It’s okay,’ and it really was. There’d be other nights—nights Eliot would have a higher likelihood of remembering in the morning. Besides, they let themselves have this, here and now. This moment, warmed and worn out, pressed into the side of Quentin’s neck and the jut of Eliot’s collarbone.

-

Eliot was waiting.

Well, he was doing more than that. He was nursing a hangover and a cup of water in a coffee cup, sitting on a bench and trying to catch Quentin Coldwater coming out of his class. The plan was simple: spot Quentin, hand him the letter before the boy can even process what’s happening, and walk away as fast as he can in his hungover state. Most important of all: be fucking brave.

But of course, given the nature of who Eliot was as a person that made the cosmic figures compelled to constantly push him down the metaphorical stairs of life, the plan did not go that way.

The way it went was as follows: the swarm of people exiting the lecture hall turned out to be far greater than was capable for Eliot’s eyes to handle. In fact, he sat there, frozen and eyes searching aimlessly for a figure with brown hair and a messenger bag, until someone tapped him on the shoulder, and said ‘Eliot?’ And coincidentally, that someone was Quentin, because of course they found each other somehow.

‘Hello,’ he said, trying not to panic, trying to think of what to say—

‘I have another class soon, but I’ve still got about fifteen minutes if you—’

‘I’ll walk you there,’ Eliot said firmly. Quentin seemed slightly stunned at the determination of the statement, but let him anyway.

It was the most tense walk of his life, to say the least. Quentin seemed to have been waiting for Eliot to say something first, but Eliot didn’t say anything, so Quentin didn’t say anything, so it was just five minutes of silence until Eliot couldn’t handle it anymore and pulled Quentin by the arm into the side of a building, secluded from the rest of the college.

‘Um, okay,’ Quentin remarked, voice pitched slightly higher than usual. Eliot took a deep breath and leaned against the wall. During the walk, he had gone through about a million things he could say, and said instead the million-and-first thing he thought with zero proofreading: ‘I didn’t tell Margo.’

It took a second for Quentin to figure out the non-sequitur. ‘Oh. Thanks?’

‘I said I wouldn’t tell if you didn’t want me to. Not even Bambi. So. What’s that thing you said?’ he said, trying to sound casual and not like he hadn’t been thinking about it every waking hour of his life since it had been uttered. ‘We have evidence for the concept, or something.’

‘Proof of concept,’ Quentin corrected automatically. His gaze was exhilaratingly intense now, ardent and anticipatory.

‘Yeah.’ Eliot waved a (hopefully) dismissive hand. _Be brave,_ he told himself. ‘I didn’t tell Margo. That’s—that’s my proof.’

Quentin looked at him half like he’d grown two more heads, half like he was about to jump him right then and there. ‘Margo. I thought you didn’t rememb—I thought you were drunk.’

‘I was drunk.’ He swallowed. ‘But I remember it.’

‘Do you remember, um. Do you remember what you said before I left?’

Be brave. Be brave. ‘Yeah.’

‘You’re awake.’

‘Yes.’

‘Are you sober?’

He let his head fall back against the wall and sighed at the sky, vaguely wishing he wasn’t. ‘Yeah.’

Quentin stepped closer, silent with his eyes still on him until Eliot thought he couldn’t possibly take another second of it. ‘You,’ he answered then, ‘you, every time, you. There’s never been anyone else but you. No one like you. Nothing like this. Ever.’

‘ _Fuck_ ,’ Eliot said, tipping his head back again. ‘Fuck, fuck goddammit, Coldwater. I—’ he reached into his coat, into the inside pocket, pulled out an envelope, ‘I wrote an entire fucking letter this afternoon and I was planning to hand it to you and, I don’t know, run off into the night or whatever but you’re here right now and I’m gonna have to do it right here and now and it’s gonna be nowhere near as eloquent as it is in the letter but I’m going to do it anyway.’

‘Um,’ Quentin said. ‘It doesn’t—it doesn’t have to be right now, if you’re not ready. I can give you more time—’

‘No,’ Eliot fixed him with an intense glare, reaching out to clasp a firm hand on his shoulder. ‘Quentin, listen to me. This is the part of the movie where Mr Darcy is waiting for Elizabeth in the crack ass hour of dawn so he can try—so he can ask her if she’ll give him a second chance, so he can tell her the vanity of his struggle to repress the fuck out of his feelings or whatever, okay? There cannot _be another time_.’

With every word he spoke, he felt Quentin lighten against his grip, reminiscent of that buoyant glee and awe he got on his face whenever he talked about his favourite books.

‘Okay,’ he said easily. ‘Go on then, Mr Darcy.’

Eliot breathed. He was gonna do this. ‘I’m sorry,’ he started. ‘I’m sorry for yesterday. I was afraid, and—and when I’m afraid, I run away.’

Quentin considered it. ‘I forgive you,’ he said, and kissed him.

It was different from the kiss they shared the other night. Sure, there were some similarities. Quentin still went all pliant and desperate when Eliot squeezed the back of his neck, and Eliot still was trying his best to not absolutely fucking lose his shit at Quentin pressing him back against the wall, at every line of his body against him, at Quentin _wanting_ him. But it was different, because the kiss was eager but never selfish. Because they had to break apart sometimes because they were both grinning too much. Because they could think about the future and be excited instead of anxious. Because with every time they pulled back just to meet back in the middle, they were choosing each other.

-

_Dear Quentin,_

_I suffered through the longest day of classes in my life to finally be able to write this letter to you, but I’m afraid I’ve been sitting at the desk, pen in hand and page inkless, for far too many minutes now. I can’t seem to find my usual verbosity today. So, without further ado, and with apologies that it must be said in its simplest form: I love you. I keep looking to adorn it, dress it up in some prose to somehow lessen its—artlessness, as it were, but nothing is coming to me. Of course I love you. Of course I do. I can’t bring myself to feel anything else. I’m too terrified to be able to travel beyond it, too terrified of what might lie in its nooks and crannies. As you know, between the two of us, you’ve always been the braver one._

_And I’m not saying it because I expect something from you. I just, realised it, is all. And thought you should know. You don’t have to overthink it in that trademark Quentin way; I can hear your cogs turning right now across spacetime. Save the overthinking for finals, okay? You don’t have to overthink it, because this is the way it’s always been—loving you has been the easiest, most effortless thing I’ve ever done. I know you’d never put a love confession in such a shittily simplistic way like I just did, but to be fair, you’ve probably had a lot more experience than me in writing bold declarations of love._

_Contrary to what some media might say, love means having to say you’re sorry all the fucking time, so here it is: I’m sorry I ran away. I shouldn’t have pushed you away the way I did. You were brave, and I was cruel. I was just so fucking scared. To let myself be loved, knowing who I really was and knowing you knew it too. That you want to loved me anyway._

_I had told myself such an idea was impossible, but you’ve always been impossible like that. With you, it had caught me off guard at first, like missing a step on the stairs or tripping on flat ground. Then I lost balance more and more often, until it felt like the ground moved too fast for me to not stumble. I love you. Have I said that already? I could feel it, the lump growing bigger and bigger in the back of my throat and the press of my lungs harder and harder against my ribcage. I can barely breathe around it now. Do you get what I mean, Quentin? It feels like I’m about to fucking burst at the seams with it._

_And I kept telling myself_ I can’t ever, ever let this happen _when I’d really meant_ I can’t let it go on any longer _—you see, I’d already dreaded my worst fear hard enough into a reality. I’d already deluded myself into believing I deserved to be happy, the way I know you make me happy. Pushing you away had felt like a desperate attempt at damage control, and I’m sorry for that. I think I know better now. So, I love you. I want to give this a shot. I want to be brave._

_Love,_

_Eliot._

-

_Dear Eliot,_

_I like to think things, the important things at least, happen in the specificity of the in-betweens. Not those big, grandiose moments, but rather in the transitions between them, the opaque details not yet seen. It’s about what has seeped into the cracks of the bedroom wall and what lingers in the space behind the fridge and what has been forgotten underneath the couch. I think I’m more fool than brave, but I promise I’m going somewhere with these nooks and crannies you mentioned you were afraid of._

_The thing is, you’d overflown in that way I’d always anticipated with someplace between thrill and apprehension. You’d overflown and spilled out into all my in-betweens, into the rooms I thought nobody would care enough to look into. And somehow, you had crawled your way into every single ridge and crevice in me and made yourself a home there. You seeped into the cracks in my bedroom wall. The space underneath the couch. All the inconsequential details that matter so much to me now with you here._

_This is what I’m trying to say: I love you. I love you. I love you. It’s crept up on me. There are many rooms still left here for you to discover, if you want to. I can’t wait for you to find them, to hear what you have to say. I know you said you’re afraid of travelling beyond. Don’t worry, though. I’ll hold your hand if you get scared._

_Love,_

_Q._

 

**Author's Note:**

> title from guts by tall friend  
> talk to me on [tumblr](https://kopfkinote.tumblr.com/ask)


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